


Discretionary Prosecution

by Ladybug_21



Category: Shetland (TV)
Genre: Backstory, F/F, Falling In Love, Workplace Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:07:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22709743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/pseuds/Ladybug_21
Summary: "I should have mentioned," Phyllis forced herself to say, her heart pounding, "I'm... interested in women."Rhona blinked, and the corners of her mouth twitched upwards."I didn't realise...""I didn't, either," Phyllis admitted.  "At least, not until I met you."
Relationships: Phyllis Brennan/Rhona Kelly
Kudos: 23





	Discretionary Prosecution

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't the faintest clue why, but I couldn't stop thinking about Phyllis Brennan this past week. Granted, a lot of said thinking involved my continuing to be stung by the end of Season 3 (yes, it's been two weeks since I finished watching it, and no, I'm still far from over everything). But the more I thought about Phyllis and all of her intriguing flaws, the more interesting of a character I found her. And this just sort of emerged from all of those musings. I don't own the rights to any of these characters, or to _Shetland_ , much as I might like letting my imagination wander through the fandom.
> 
> As a linguistic note on the title, while "prosecution" today primarily refers to the state's instigation of criminal charges against a defendant, its original meanings included "the pursuit of something to its conclusion." And, as a disclaimer concerning content, I know extremely little about the Scottish criminal justice system, so thank you to any experts reading for tolerating a lot of gaps between the research that I was able to do.

Phyllis never would figure out why exactly Ben had thought she'd be suited for app-based dating.

"Honestly, darling, there's no point," she protested as Ben began swiping through photos on Phyllis's phone, looking for a few to add to her dating profile. "You know what a Luddite I am, I'll just forget it's there, half the time."

"This is a really lovely photo of you!" Ben replied, ignoring his mother. "Where was it taken?"

"Aberdeen, maybe?" Phyllis tried to grab her phone, but Ben pushed his chair back just a little from the dining room table so that he was out of reach. "Besides, I'm too old for dating apps. They're designed for young people like you, in their twenties and thirties..."

"Oh, you'd be surprised." Ben smirked a bit as he began filling out the personal information on the profile. "I promise you that there are lots of people in their fifties online, looking for true love. And it's nice, actually, knowing that going out to dinner really _is_ a date, from both of your perspectives. Good way to avoid nerve-wracking ambiguity."

"Is it." Phyllis rolled her eyes. "You know, when I was your age, if I was looking for a date, I'd just go to the local pub and wait for someone promising to buy me a drink. _That_ always avoided nerve-wracking ambiguity well enough for me."

"Yeah, but Mum, would you _ever_ do that, these days? Ever since I was a kid, you've been so wrapped up in work that I can't remember you dating _at all_ , even after... well." Ben glanced across the table and the remnants of brunch. "And I worry about you sometimes. I know you won't like my saying this, but you living here all alone..."

"Oh, so is _that_ what this all about? Making sure that I have some aggressive he-man around to keep me safe? Has it ever occurred to you that I could just adopt a Rottweiler for twice the loyalty and thrice the security and a tenth of the fuss?"

"You can't make the rest of your life about work and nothing but work, Mum." Ben finally handed the phone back to Phyllis. "Make sure it looks how you want it, before it goes public."

Phyllis was sorely tempted to delete the entire profile, but she really was extraordinarily bad at telling Ben "no." Besides, he looked so excited about doing something for her that he thought would be genuinely helpful.

"Fine," she sighed, and she hit the button to publish the profile on the app. "Now, enough about my romantic life, or lack thereof—what's this latest glitch in booking the venue?"

True to her prediction, Phyllis did continually forget that she even had a dating app. But logging in to see who was interested in her profile was always an adventure, and one that Phyllis enjoyed more than she would have predicted. It was quite flattering, really, to have so many men expressing interest in her, or at least in her online persona. That _never_ happened in the office, where everyone knew their place and Phyllis was fairly certain that any of her male colleagues would rather be instantly exiled to Siberia, without a fair trial, than so much as flirt with their senior fiscal.

Finally, Phyllis decided to actually _try_ this whole app dating phenomenon, and so she found herself out to dinner one evening with Hamish, a bespectacled widower with a quiet laugh and a bookshop in the West End.

"Well, this has been just lovely," Phyllis told him at the end of the evening, as he walked her to her car.

"I'm glad you think so." Hamish's eyes crinkled when he smiled. "Does this mean you might be interested in meeting up again?"

"Yes." Phyllis smiled. "Yes, I might be." She shook herself a bit. "But this coming week might be a little difficult, scheduling-wise. I'm off to Edinburgh for a few days, big convening for... for people in my field."

(She hadn't mentioned to Hamish at any point over dinner that she was a procurator fiscal. Not that Phyllis thought he would object, but she thought it might be refreshing for once to be judged for who she was _outside_ of her professional position of authority.)

"Well, good luck with everything." They had stopped next to Phyllis's car, and Hamish leaned over and kissed Phyllis on the cheek. "See you when you're back in Glasgow, then."

 _That was nice_ , Phyllis thought as she drove home. Hamish seemed like a lovely person, and Phyllis imagined that she could grow to like him very much, once they got to know each other better.

* * *

Phyllis was up early the next day to catch the Shuttle to Edinburgh, but the train was delayed, and despite her best-laid plans, Phyllis found herself racing up the steps at Waverley and between the elegant stone façades of the Old Town. As she entered the Headquarters of the Crown Office, already about twenty minutes late for her first meeting, Phyllis was annoyed to find that she was panting slightly, a strand or two of hair insistently falling into her eyes where the wind had blown it out of place. She took a few minutes to tidy herself up as best she could, then charged towards the conference room and the meeting that she was missing.

"Phyllis!" Andrew grinned as Phyllis slipped into the chair next to him. "So generous of you to finally grace us with your presence."

"Sorry, the bloody train was delayed half an hour," Phyllis muttered in Andrew's ear. "Did I miss anything important?"

"Nah, not yet. Jamie's going over the agenda. Glad you're here safely, delays and all."

"Hmm." Phyllis leaned back and crossed her arms, surveying the room. All the predictable faces—Jamie reading out the agenda, Agatha rubbing the lenses of her reading glasses clean with the hem of her shirt, Rabbie already looking bored enough to sleep-walk out the window. But her eyes narrowed when she singled out the one person she didn't recognise, a woman with dark hair cascading over her shoulders who was watching Jamie with enough attentiveness to make up for Rabbie twice over.

"Who's that?" Phyllis whispered to Andrew.

"PF down from Lerwick, Shetland," Andrew muttered back. "She had to miss the last conference, for some reason, so we're all only just meeting her. Rhona something."

But Phyllis didn't have to wonder for long what the newcomer's surname was, because a moment later, Jamie lifted his eyes from the page he was reading and asked if there were any requested changes to the agenda. After a moment, the unfamiliar woman raised her hand.

"Yes, Ms Kelly?" Jamie asked with bemused interest.

"I was wondering if we were planning to have any conversation about formalising the scope of our discretion as prosecutors," the woman asked in a matter-of-fact tone. "I noticed nothing of that nature was on the agenda as given, and it seems like a salient issue for the sake of prosecutorial uniformity across Scotland."

Phyllis cleared her throat almost imperceptibly and looked down at the table. Of _course_ it was a salient issue, and it was one that she'd very carefully lobbied to keep off the last three conference agendas. A hint of cold dread seemed to trickle through Phyllis's core as she imagined having to explain to Calvin Sarwar that her colleagues had very deliberately curtailed her ability to turn down pursuing investigations into financial institutions like Dolos.

"Are there any objections to adding Ms Kelly's proposal to the end of the conference schedule?" Jamie glanced around the room and met Phyllis's eyes for a second; when she shook her head imperceptibly, he concluded, "Right, then, time permitting, we'll add two hours' worth of discussion to the conference agenda on Thursday, before we wrap up."

The rest of the morning wore on, and Phyllis managed to keep her mind from wandering too much into how best to temper the newly proposed discussion on Thursday. The meeting went straight through lunch—sandwiches catered in—and so the first chance that Phyllis had to speak with Rhona Kelly was as the assembled fiscals meandered out of Headquarters and down Chambers Street towards the hotel where they'd all been booked for the duration of the conference.

"Ms Kelly," she said, finally catching up with the other woman as the fiscals spilled into the hotel lobby. "I just wanted to introduce myself. Phyllis Brennan."

"Aha, a given name to go with the 'Ms Brennan' I've been hearing all day." The woman grinned at Phyllis and held out a hand. "Oh, and for god's sake, _please_ call me Rhona when we're not in there. A woman can only stand so much formality in one day."

"Well, then, Rhona." Rhona's handshake was brisk but friendly. Even in boots with three-inch heels, she was still several inches shorter than Phyllis in flats, but Phyllis sensed that what Rhona lacked in stature, she more than made up in personality. "I'll have to ask you to call me Phyllis, in return. I apologise for only just getting around to saying hello properly."

" _You_ don't need to apologise," Rhona pointed out. "The way they've structured this entire conference, we barely have a moment to catch our breaths, let alone socialise!" She glanced around the hotel lobby. "I assume that's why they've put us all in the same hotel, so we can get to know each other over drinks after the day's formally over?"

"That, or block reservation discounts," Phyllis suggested wryly, and Rhona laughed. "I still haven't checked in, so..."

"Oh, go put your things upstairs, then!" Rhona exclaimed. "But, if you're not planning to collapse as soon as you get to your room, I could definitely use a drink, and I'm hoping that at least one other fiscal at the conference feels the same way."

Phyllis expected to want to take a hot shower and go straight to bed the instant she got to her room, but she unexpectedly felt wide awake, and she knew that sitting around by herself for too long would just result in more gnawing anxiety over the whole Sarwar situation. So, since she had at least a slight chance at ameliorating that matter, Phyllis wandered back down to the lobby, where, true to her word, Rhona was seated alone at the hotel bar, nursing a glass of Malbec.

"What'll you have?" she asked as Phyllis sat down beside her. "On me, of course."

"Oh, there's no need..." Phyllis began.

"Nonsense," smiled Rhona, "this is my way of trying to make friends of all of you, don't deny me my one sure means of ingratiation!"

Phyllis somehow doubted very much that buying people's drinks was the extent of Rhona's charm, but she let Rhona put a glass of Cabernet on her tab, regardless.

"Cheers," Rhona added, clinking her glass against Phyllis's. "So, how's a nice English girl like you end up a senior fiscal in Glasgow?"

"Oh, typical story," Phyllis sighed. "Followed a nice Scottish boy up north and never left."

Rhona gently swirled the contents of her wine glass, her eyes on Phyllis.

"He still in the picture?"

"No," said Phyllis shortly.

Rhona took the hint and simply nodded.

"But I really and truly do love Glasgow," Phyllis added. "Whenever I go visit my family down south, they warn me that I'm getting more and more Scottish by the year."

"I'd take that as a compliment, whatever the intended meaning," Rhona smiled. "Well, on behalf of the rest of the Scottish criminal justice system, thank you for staying."

Phyllis took a sip of wine, then set her glass down and cleared her throat.

"I'm curious, your agenda item earlier implied that you'd want to _narrow_ the scope of our discretion. Why, exactly?"

Rhona shrugged.

"Let me put it this way: I find bright-line rules very comforting," she explained. "And I wouldn't mind having a few more of them, to clarify what should absolutely be prosecuted, and where there's more wiggle room."

"But do you really think it would change the way you operate?" Phyllis challenged her.

"Maybe, maybe not," said Rhona. "Look, I like doing things by the book—law enforcement officer, surprise. But a lot of life revolves around figuring out how far you can _bend_ the rules, and without knowing exactly where the bright lines of those rules are, it's very difficult to know just how far you can bend them without actually breaking them."

Phyllis shook her head, a smile playing about her lips.

"What?" Rhona said defensively.

"Nothing. You make a very compelling point. I don't quite agree, but I see why you raised the issue."

"Thank you," said Rhona, raising her glass slightly to Phyllis before taking a sip of wine. "I'll be interested to hear what everyone has to say about it on Thursday, at any rate."

It was around then that Rabbie finally meandered downstairs to join his colleagues, and within a few minutes, Rhona had nearly spit wine across the bar in reaction to one of Rabbie's droll comments. Phyllis watched her two colleagues with a slight smile, Rabbie as comically dour as ever, Rhona grinning at him from ear to ear with some loud exclamation. Yes, she decided, Rhona Kelly wasn't going to have a jot of trouble befriending the rest of the Scottish procurators fiscal—although, selfishly, Phyllis was glad that she'd had a few moments alone with the exuberant newcomer.

* * *

The following day began early and continued at the same relentless pace. Everyone had to present on the current status of their area; Agatha and Matt nearly got into a shouting match over some detail to do with funding for forensics experts; Rabbie actually fell asleep for a solid three minutes, until he started to snore and Andrew had to kick him in the shin beneath the table, while Jamie pretended not to notice. To top it all off, Ben called just after an actual lunch break began, meaning that Phyllis had to excuse herself from chatting with Andrew and Rhona.

"What? No—Ben, darling, I'm not getting involved with this right now!" Phyllis was nearly shouting over the phone when Rhona approached her. "Look, I have to go, we'll talk when I get back, all right?"

Phyllis ended the call with a sigh of frustration.

"Everything okay?" Rhona asked, her expression just a touch alarmed.

"Yes, it will be." Phyllis glanced at Rhona. "My son's getting married in five months, and the reception venue's been trying to impose all sorts of new fees and conditions as of earlier this week, even though we signed the contract ages ago. Sorry for getting so exercised about everything."

"By all means, get exercised, they sound like right arseholes," Rhona said, quirking a smile at Phyllis. "Jamie's just called everyone back in. Am I allowed to call him Jamie, do you think, or do formal titles extend into our lunch break?"

Phyllis smiled appreciatively and followed Rhona back into the conference room.

Everyone was truly exhausted by the end of the day, and a much less animated troop of fiscals dragged themselves back down Chambers Street to the hotel.

"No wine for me tonight, ladies, I'm knackered," Rabbie apologised. But when Rhona glanced at Phyllis, Phyllis shrugged one shoulder, and the two retreated back across the lobby to the bar.

"I'm treating you this time," Phyllis insisted as she ordered a gin and tonic and Rhona asked for a whiskey.

"We'll see about that," Rhona smiled. "You sorted out the wedding venue issue yet?"

"What? Oh, god." Phyllis exhaled a disgruntled huff of air and gladly accepted her drink when the bartender handed it to her. "No, just one of the millions of little things to handle, once I get back to my normal life. Well, you know how it is." Fatigue making her feel suddenly mischievous, Phyllis shot a smirk at Rhona. "Or _do_ you? I imagine that an island full of sheep can only give one so much angst."

"Mmm, more angst than you might imagine." Rhona set down her whiskey and leaned in a bit, eager to meet Phyllis's teasing head-on. "Whenever there's a serious crime in Shetland, it can be a real headache, trying to figure out which sheep did it. Their witness statements are always incredibly woolly."

"Oh, stop," laughed Phyllis.

"No, but really," grinned Rhona, "I daresay we might be the per capita murder centre of the universe, given the surprisingly high ratio of violent homicides to non-sheep inhabitants in Shetland."

"This your way of warning me to stay away?" Phyllis smiled.

"On the contrary." Rhona winked. "I can promise that the scenery is some of the most stunning imaginable, especially since we've gotten very good at tucking the dead bodies discreetly out of sight."

It struck Phyllis that maybe she'd been in this line of business for too long, that she found Rhona's macabre sense of humour so entertaining. She tried to think of something witty to say in return, failed, and instead took another sip of her drink.

"Got a good argument lined up for tomorrow?" Rhona asked suddenly, and Phyllis nearly spat out her sip of gin and tonic.

"I think so," she lied, her heart suddenly beating a little more quickly with adrenaline. "I'm not previewing anything for you, though."

"Even after I gave you my entire spiel?" Rhona feigned a hurt expression. "Well, all right, then."

"Again, it's not that I don't agree with you about the utility of bright-line rules," Phyllis repeated. "I just think that, sometimes, matters are too grey to place on one side of a line or another. Things aren't this or that, but rather both, or neither."

"Impossible to classify," Rhona suggested.

"Precisely."

"Hmm." Rhona smiled into her whiskey.

"You don't agree?"

"It's just that, in our line of work, the question _always_ comes down to whether to investigate and/or prosecute," Rhona pointed out. "Of course I agree that life involves a lot of ambiguity, hence the need to bend the rules a bit sometimes. But don't we, as procurators fiscal, ultimately need to _remove_ that ambiguity from the messiness of life, since our job requires that we proceed assuming a binary choice: to act, or not to act?"

Phyllis blinked at Rhona, whose lips were pursed into the tiniest of smirks, knowing that she currently had the upper hand of this debate. Her head suddenly felt as if it were swimming slightly, and although she desperately felt the urge to say _something_ to Rhona, she didn't have a clue what that something should be. Fortunately, at that precise moment, Phyllis's phone began to buzz on the counter of the bar. She glanced down at the caller ID and considered answering for a long moment, before hitting the volume to silence the phone and tossing it into her purse.

"If you need to get that..."

"Not right this instant," Phyllis sighed, folding her arms on the counter.

"Who's Hamish, if I can ask?" Rhona asked curiously. "Another son?"

"Oh, no," smiled Phyllis, taking a sip of her gin and tonic. "He's, erm, someone I met recently."

Rhona's eyebrows edged upwards.

"So, a boyfriend."

"God, no," Phyllis laughed. "I've had dinner with him literally once."

"Well, but potential?"

"Maybe." Phyllis shrugged one shoulder. "Told him I wouldn't mind meeting up for dinner again, which is probably why he's calling. He's nice. A little hard to read, but very nice."

"A ringing endorsement," replied Rhona wryly.

"It's too early to tell," Phyllis insisted. "Takes a while to draw some men out of their shells. I'm sure you know the type."

Rhona smiled and set down her whiskey.

"Aye," she conceded, "but it all seems unnecessarily complicated."

"Ah," grinned Phyllis, "so only the most outgoing and reckless of men for the daring Rhona Kelly, then?"

"Oh, Jesus, no, not for me," Rhona laughed. "No men at all, thanks very much."

Phyllis's hand and the tumbler in it froze halfway between the counter and her mouth.

"Really," she said.

Rhona's eyebrows rose a touch, this time somewhat defensively.

"You're not about to tell me that your morals are horribly offended, are you?"

"Not at all." Phyllis finally managed to raise her tumbler to her lips and take another sip. "I just wouldn't have guessed."

"Stealth lesbians, we're everywhere." Rhona winked and downed the remainder of her whiskey, but Phyllis could see that her shoulders had visibly relaxed. "Well, probably should turn in, given the early agenda tomorrow morning and the fact that I'm as knackered as Rabbie. Good luck scheduling your dinner, and see you soon."

Not until after Rhona had left did Phyllis realise that she had quietly paid for both their drinks, again. Phyllis smiled as she got into the lift, leaned her head back against the cool metal wall and closed her eyes, letting the upwards motion and the slight alcoholic buzz make her light-headed. _So Rhona Kelly is romantically interested in women_ , she thought. Not that it mattered, of course, much as it might to some people. Phyllis really couldn't give less of a damn.

Or so Phyllis thought, until she woke up the next morning to the blare of her alarm, rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, and realised with a sudden and very unexpected jolt that, in fact, it mattered more than anything else in the _world_ to her that Rhona Kelly was romantically interested in women.

* * *

How hilariously _different_ it made things, Phyllis reflected as she poured herself coffee at breakfast. For all goods and purposes, virtually everything at the conference was exactly as it had been previously: same room, same people, same pens and legal notepads scattered across the same tables. Phyllis was reasonably certain that Andrew had even been wearing the same shirt for the past three days, although she had no intention of calling him out on it. But it was like viewing the entire set-up through tinted spectacles, knowing that Rhona was interested in women—and, far more importantly, knowing that she, Phyllis, was interested in Rhona. The previous day, Phyllis had been delighted whenever Rhona had appeared in her nearby vicinity, when she had chosen to chat with her during lunch or seated herself next to Phyllis during dinner. Today, though, it was as if Phyllis's entire being was tuned to the same frequency as Rhona; she could barely take her eyes off of the other woman, felt as helplessly drawn to her as though a magnetic force had been established between them, could hardly contain her elation when Rhona shot her a smile from across the room.

"And now, for Ms Kelly's agenda item," Jamie finally said that afternoon, and Phyllis felt her stomach lurch as Rhona began laying out her argument about bright-line rules, the subject matter and the speaker equally to blame for her reaction.

"Ms Brennan, did you want to rebut?" Rhona concluded, staring right at Phyllis with a glint of challenge in her gaze.

Despite the perilous line she was walking with this issue, Phyllis hadn't thought a jot about this whole matter all morning, her mind had been so preoccupied by Rhona. Upon realising this, Phyllis wondered for a truly insane second what would happen if she simply _let_ Rhona win this debate—let her gently tug at the thread that would unravel the web of lies in which Phyllis had so unwittingly entrapped herself. It would almost be a relief, to surrender to Rhona's sound logic, to allow Rhona to rescue her from suffocating under the despicable weight of Calvin Sarwar's threats. But then Phyllis noticed how Rhona was staring at her, like she wanted to see what Phyllis was truly made of, like she wanted her to fight back with her best. And Phyllis, hating herself for her cowardice, also realised that today, all that she wanted was to appear as impressive and infallible and morally righteous as possible, in the fleeting hope that Rhona might somehow find Phyllis just as wonderful as she found Rhona.

"Yes," replied Phyllis instead.

And thank god that her fiscal brain was able to seize control for a few minutes. Being a consummate professional, Phyllis managed to shuffle together some coherent and convincing-sounding arguments about the need for region-specific prosecutorial discretion and allocation of investigative resources, given the vastly different terrains of, say, Glasgow's organised crime world, as compared to Shetland's occasional isolated murder. By the time she was done, even Rhona was nodding very slightly, a subtle but gracious smile quirking at the corner of her mouth. Phyllis breathed a deep internal sigh of relief over the fact that, for the moment, her secret was in no more danger of being discovered than it had been that morning. (Absurdly, Phyllis was also gratified that she had had the excuse to stare directly at Rhona for five minutes straight while she laid out her argument, without needing to worry that she was being too obvious.)

 _Ridiculous_ , thought Phyllis, shaking her head as she watched Rhona laughing across the table at one of Jamie's terrible jokes during the closing dinner for the conference. Utterly ridiculous, that she should be so overwhelmingly infatuated, like some flighty teenager with her first big crush. The other fiscals kept telling Phyllis that she had definitively won her debate with Rhona earlier that day (" _The strength of the Procurator Fiscal Service is not in its uniformity, but in its adaptability—_ who the hell _are_ you, Winston sodding Churchill?" Andrew teased her, clearly impressed). And yet, since then, Phyllis's mind had been so preoccupied with subtly tracking the whereabouts and reactions of one Rhona Kelly, that she herself barely recalled a word that she had said.

"Hello," said Rhona cheerfully as everyone began to rise from the table and gather their things. Phyllis started just a bit, her heart suddenly beating at twice its normal tempo. "Heading back to the hotel?"

"Yes," Phyllis replied, hoping that she was somehow managing to smile like a normal person. "Well, perhaps a bit circuitously, but yes."

"Same." Rhona tipped her head towards the door. "Shall we, then?"

The two wandered through the lamplit streets of Edinburgh together, up towards the Castle, back down High Street, chatting about this and that, laughing. Phyllis's heart was still hammering in her chest, loudly enough that _surely_ Rhona must be able to hear it, must be able to surmise how intoxicating her presence was to Phyllis?

"I hope you don't mind my knocking down your proposal earlier today," Phyllis said as they slowly approached the hotel.

"You made a good point." Rhona shrugged. "Can't be offended by that. Truth be told, you had me convinced by the end of your very impressive presentation. Although I'll maintain the right to enjoy bright-line rules and a lack of ambiguity in the rest of life, thank you very much."

Phyllis nodded, wishing that her performance had been entirely to impress Rhona, and not driven in equal part by fear.

"I've so enjoyed getting to know you, these past few days," Rhona continued, holding the door of the hotel lobby for Phyllis. "Previous joking aside, if you ever want to visit Shetland..."

"I'll be sure to get in touch." Phyllis smiled as she and Rhona crossed to the lift. "And, likewise, if and when work brings you to Glasgow, I'll be delighted to see you."

The lift dinged and the doors opened. Phyllis followed Rhona inside, and the two stood in silence for a moment while they moved upwards a few floors. When the doors opened for Phyllis, she stepped out of the lift and turned to say goodbye to Rhona, then found that words had abandoned her entirely.

 _A lack of ambiguity in the rest of life_ , Phyllis repeated to herself, staring at Rhona—Rhona, who could forgive the messiness of life so long as she had _some_ clarity as to how to make sense of it.

"Phyllis?" said Rhona quietly, and, as the lift doors began to close, Rhona's hand shot out to pry them open again, Phyllis's hand landing on top of Rhona's.

 _Just tell her_ , Phyllis ordered herself, almost abnormally attuned to the sensation of Rhona's hand beneath her own. _She's your friend, she'll be kind about it, the absolute worst that can happen is that she'll say thanks but no thanks, and you'll both go home and that will be that..._

"I should have mentioned," Phyllis forced herself to say, her heart pounding, "I'm... interested in women."

Rhona blinked, and the corners of her mouth twitched upwards.

"I didn't realise..."

"I didn't, either," Phyllis admitted. "At least, not until I met you."

Rhona took a tentative step closer, her smile broadening. She was close enough that Phyllis could feel Rhona's breath warm against her skin.

"Do you," Phyllis whispered, "erm, do you want to come over to my room? Seeing as it's right here, and we're, erm, probably holding up the lift."

Rhona laughed quietly, but she nodded and followed Phyllis down the hallway to her room. Neither spoke until the door had shut behind them, and Phyllis turned back to Rhona, who still seemed to be waiting for something with the same look of bright-eyed amusement.

"Look," sighed Phyllis, "I don't even know what I'm even doing, I don't know what this all means, it's been a very confusing day for a number of reasons..."

"It's all right," Rhona interrupted gently.

"The thing is," Phyllis continued, "I've never felt this way about another woman before. Been years since I felt this way about a man, for that matter. And I'm... I'm not sure what I want. But I wanted to tell you, because it seemed like the right thing to do."

"You don't _need_ to know what you want," Rhona said. "And you certainly don't need to sort it all out tonight. Give yourself as much time as you need."

Phyllis nodded.

"But," Rhona added after a moment, her face suddenly a bit flushed, "for what it's worth, I'm really glad you told me."

Phyllis's mouth had gone dry.

"Are you?" she managed finally.

Rhona nodded, smiling almost shyly.

Phyllis reached out slowly and took Rhona's hand, this time allowing herself to savour its weight, the texture of Rhona's skin, the way the warmth of her palm disappeared into the slight coolness of her fingertips. She couldn't have said if she moved closer to Rhona, or if Rhona drew closer to her; all Phyllis knew was that suddenly Rhona was as close as she had been at the lift doors, and Phyllis felt as if she could barely breathe.

"Rhona," she whispered, and suddenly Rhona's arms were around her neck, gently pulling Phyllis towards her for a kiss. Phyllis emerged with a sigh from the heady sensations of Rhona's lips and tongue, then greedily pressed her mouth to Rhona's for more, Rhona's fingers digging into Phyllis's hair and scalp, setting her entire body tingling. She moaned as Rhona pushed her gently onto the bed and began placing a row of tiny kisses along her collarbone.

"God, Phyllis," Rhona breathed, her fingers on the first button of Phyllis's shirt.

"Rhona, wait, I don't..." Phyllis began.

Rhona pulled her hand abruptly away from Phyllis.

"Jesus, I'm sorry," she muttered, "I shouldn't have presumed..."

"No, no," laughed Phyllis. She seized Rhona's hand and kissed her fingers. "It's not that. I... I definitely want you to. But I've never done _this_ before, with another woman, and I just don't want you to be disappointed if I have no bloody idea what I'm doing."

Rhona grinned and leaned forward to kiss Phyllis again, once, twice, gently, their fingers entwining on the comforter of the hotel bed.

"Just trust me," Rhona purred, pulling her hand away from Phyllis's so that she could undo the buttons of Phyllis's shirt.

And Phyllis did trust Rhona. Which was a good thing, because soon she was utterly helpless, all rational thought gone from her mind, at the complete mercy of Rhona's hands and fingers and lips and teeth and tongue, conscious only of her overwhelming desire for Rhona, Rhona, _Rhona_. When the alarm went off the next morning and Phyllis stirred, she found Rhona's shorter body spooned comfortably within her embrace. _We fit so well together_ , Phyllis marvelled, and after hitting the alarm, she nuzzled her nose into the comforting smell of Rhona's hair. Finally, Rhona stirred and rolled over beneath Phyllis's arm to face her.

"Good morning," said Phyllis, almost shyly, struck with the sudden sense of being adrift, unsure of what she had just done. But Rhona responded by laying one warm hand on Phyllis's cheek and kissing her tenderly, and everything in the world seemed to settle back into a secure place.

"Dare I ask what time it is?" Rhona sighed. "I have a plane to catch at one..."

"We can still spare a few minutes," Phyllis promised her, her fingers lacing between Rhona's under the comforter. "Rhona, listen, I... I want to keep seeing you, if you're interested."

"Didn't I already make my interest clear, when I invited you to come to Shetland?" Rhona grinned, but her eyes were soft with affection. "I'll be sorely disappointed now, if you never visit. So will all of our grizzled sheep perpetrators."

"You're ridiculous," Phyllis smiled, kissing Rhona again. "Yes, of course I'll come visit, if you'll come to Glasgow sometime."

"Aye." Rhona snuggled against Phyllis's shoulder. "I'd like that."

Phyllis sighed slowly, wishing she didn't have to say what she was about to say.

"Just one request, though. I'd prefer not to make all this public, at least for the time being."

Phyllis expected the resigned little smile that Rhona gave her, the one that clearly queried whether Phyllis was embarrassed about being involved with another woman. And, on cue, Phyllis's perpetual resentment towards Calvin Sarwar flared once again, because Phyllis _couldn't_ simply explain to Rhona that she had been blackmailed for years by the world's slimiest gang lawyer, and that she needed time to assess exactly what Sarwar would _do_ with information about Rhona, if word of their relationship spread...

"Just given the optics of it," Phyllis improvised. "I know you'd _never_ let any of this impact your work, and I know you're fine with bending rules, but let's just make sure first that we're not breaking this one completely, seeing as I technically _am_ your superior."

Rhona shot her a wicked grin.

"Oh, _are_ you, now? If we had enough time to challenge that assertion..."

"Save that for when you come visit me in Glasgow," Phyllis told her, and then her smile faltered. "Oh, god, what am I going to do about poor Hamish?"

Rhona snorted with laughter.

"Just tell him that you still think he's lovely, but that you don't think it's going to work out between you," she recommended. "Best to be polite but direct about it. No need to mention that you've met someone else."

Rhona was right, of course. Phyllis had just leaned in to kiss her again when Rhona's phone began buzzing insistently from the night stand.

"Sorry," sighed Rhona, and she rolled over to seize her phone. "It's my DI, hang on... hey, Jimmy, can I call you back—"

Phyllis smiled sympathetically as Rhona's expression changed from one of annoyance to one of alarm.

"Shit," she muttered, swinging her legs off the edge of the bed so she could sit up. "Okay, give me half an hour to pack, and I'll try to catch the earlier flight." She ended the call and turned apologetically towards Phyllis.

"Go," Phyllis told her, because if there was one thing that Rhona definitely didn't have to explain to her, it was the professional demands of being a procurator fiscal. "I'll see you soon."

And, after Rhona had dressed and departed with a final kiss, Phyllis too dragged herself out of bed to shower and face the new day.

* * *

Ben, being the thoughtful son that he was, insisted on picking Phyllis up from Queen Street when her train arrived.

"Hello, darling," Phyllis said, kissing Ben on the cheek, and she helped him lift her suitcase into the boot of his car.

"Conference went well, I take it?" he asked her as they pulled out into traffic. "You certainly look like you had a good time."

"I did." Phyllis paused. "Actually, I met someone. A colleague, not someone from the app."

"Oh?" Ben's eyes were still on the road, but he was clearly intrigued. "Any chance of it becoming serious?"

"Maybe." Phyllis took a deep breath. "But she lives in Shetland. No idea if long distance is something that would suit her, or me, for that matter. We'll have to see."

Ben said nothing for a long moment, and Phyllis bit the inside of her lip, worrying that she had said too much too soon.

"Okay, yeah, that is a pretty long distance," Ben finally conceded, "but you might as well give it a go and at least try to make it work?"

Phyllis turned and smiled at her son, filled with more gratitude than she could express, and they rode the rest of the way in companionable silence. Once Ben had dropped Phyllis and her suitcase off, she texted Hamish the polite but direct sentiments that Rhona had recommended, then texted Rhona to let her know that she was safely back in Glasgow. And then, after a moment of consideration, Phyllis deleted the dating app off of her phone. It turned out that finding a date the old-fashioned way still worked better than just fine, after all.


End file.
